How Nutrient Sources are Selected for bio365’s Clean, Living Soil

How and why a growing media manufacturer chooses its nutrient sources directly correlates with the results cultivators will get when they use that media. Every grower should ask their soil supplier how they make decisions about nutrient sources, and the answer should be based on data, including scientific data and real-world experiential data. 

Keep in mind, a list of ingredients is just that – a list. If the soil manufacturer is just dumping a bunch of ingredients in a bag, that’s all you’ll get when you buy it. To get the best results, you need more than a bunch of individual ingredients.

At bio365, our proprietary manufacturing process makes the growing media we produce more than the sum of its individual parts. Using our proprietary biological activation and aging process, we bring ingredients together and biotransform them to improve outcomes for growers.

With that said, we can categorize our strategies for selecting nutrient sources that make our clean, living soil in two ways: input and output. Let’s take a closer look at what that means.

Selecting Nutrient Sources Based on Input

Every grower knows your plants need specific nutrients to thrive. A soil manufacturer’s goal should be to ensure the nutrients plants need are in the product they make and available to customers’ plants on demand.

For example, most plants need nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, and more. Those nutrients should be present in the soil and available to plants as needed – even in controlled environment agriculture – just like they are in nature.

Individual Nutrient Sources

There is more to choosing sources for things like phosphorous and calcium than you might think. At bio365, we follow a very careful selection process because we don’t want to make selections that could negatively affect growers’ results, such as increasing heavy metal uptake or allowing too much nutrient uptake.

For instance, we’ve done years of research, testing, and real-world application to choose a source of phosphorous that is lower in heavy metals than other source!

Balance of Nutrients

We’re also very specific about how the nutrient sources we choose work together. What’s important isn’t just the list of single nutrient sources or ingredients. It’s the balance of nutrients and how they work together that is critical to cultivation success.

As an example, we may use feather meal as a nitrogen source and poultry litter as a source of nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and more. We may also use bone meal as a source of phosphorous and calcium. Notice the overlap in some minerals? Not only are we selective about the nutrient sources we choose, but we’re also very careful about getting the perfect balance when various sources are brought together.

Vendor Selection

At bio365, we have a long list of criteria we use when vetting suppliers for all of our manufacturing ingredients, including nutrient sources. All ingredients must be organic and suitable for organic production, and they must have the appropriate certifications and labeling.

All bio365 vendors and ingredients go through a rigorous vetting process. Samples are sent to a trusted, third-party lab and deployed in test batches before we commit to any purchases.

Selecting Nutrient Sources Based on Output

Selecting nutrient sources is about more than what goes into a soil product. It’s also about what happens to those nutrients during the manufacturing process and what comes out as the final product growers will use.

Biotransformation

Remember, bio365 soil isn’t just a bunch of ingredients mixed together – the soil we produce (i.e., output) is much more than the sum of its parts because we biotransform the ingredients through our proprietary biological activation and aging process used to make bioCHARGE®.

It’s bioCHARGE that enables our clean, living soil to make nutrients bioavailable and deliver nutrients on-demand that are tailored to the plants’ needs. For instance, poultry litter may be used as a phosphorous and calcium source in a bio365 growing media product. However, you can’t find poultry litter in the final product because it’s been transformed. The properties of the input are changed through our proprietary process.

Furthermore, you won’t find any remaining animal ingredients aside from carbon in bio365’s finished growing media. Any nutrients derived from animal sources are processed through our biological activation and aging process. After biotransformation, they’re pathogen-free and available to your plants, but they won’t burn or harm your plants.

Totality of Nutrients

When nutrients are brought together in bio365’s patented biotransformation process, they make a whole. Again, the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. In the case of bio365 growing media, the manufacturing process leads to what we refer to as the totality of nutrients.

Not only does our soil include the macro-nutrients from our nutrient source inputs, but it also includes micro-nutrients and trace elements that are teased out during biotransformation. Together, the macro- and micro-nutrients, along with trace elements, lead to better outcomes for growers. It’s another key reason why cannabis cultivators choose bio365 soil.

Biological Alchemy

At bio365, we think of our manufacturing process as biological alchemy. To make bioCHARGE, which is anchored around our patented bioCORE® biochar, we have nutrient sources that play different roles. For example, coco coir provides carbon, which is the energy source for plants to grow. Next, we add macro- and micro- elements and the right environment to encourage growth. By environment, we’re referring to biological microbial populations that live on the surface environment that bioCHARGE provides to hold water and release nutrients as needed.

In other words, bio365 selects ingredients to give plants the food, nutrients, and the environment needed to grow to their maximum potential. We pick the input ingredients that lead to the best output after biotransformation.

Key Takeaways about Nutrient Sources in Growing Media

Not all growing media or nutrient sources are the same. At bio365, we start with the carefully-selected ingredients that go into making our soil, and then, we use a patented process to biotransform those ingredients. What comes out of the process is a growing media that mimics nature and gives plants the biology they need but can’t get from any other 100% clean, living media.

Ready to give bio365 soil a try? Request a trial or contact us to talk to a soil expert.